


Lilith's Piety

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Character Study, Christianity, Christmas Mass, Gen, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, The Problem of Susan, religious angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:54:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5519489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Once, she would have been the first to open her mouth to trill high and clear, pretty Susan who was always on the frontline of the choir. Lucy was the one that always end up being put on the back row for fidgeting, she remembered.<em></em></em>
</p>
<p>Nowadays, Susan Pevensie has her own Christmas traditions.</p>
<p>
  <em></em>
</p>
<p>
  <em></em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lilith's Piety

A woman slips out of the bus, thanking the bus driver when he helped her lift a short suitcase. She smiled when he wished her a merry Christmas and returned the wish, with greeting for his family. The last and only bus of the day, she knew he was going home to a wife and three children, another one on the way. Her heart twinges for a moment at the memory of another family of four siblings and she let the ache last, rinse through her like water.

Christmas Eve was for cheap couture dresses and new garters, reading Dickens while her hair curled. The gifts, carefully wrapped and piled by the door, were hoisted to a friend's car and duly distributed at the house of whoever invited Susan this year. A mostly casual affair of doctorate students and red lipped orphans, they congregated around the wholes war and distance carved and filled them with eggnog and giggling carols for the night. Midnight mass was left unmentioned but for the obligatory religious anecdote.

That was Christmas Eve. Christmas Morning was a cold apartment and a colder bed, white window ledges, sobbing naked in the tub in time with the church bells. It was tea that took too long to steep. Honey and two spoofulls of sugar, like Edmund took it. She changed it every year, a cup of perfectly brewed tea for a perfectly gone loved one. She chugged it down in one go, unladylike gulps salty and syrupy thick on her tongue. It never did anything for her hangover.

Then the dressing, last night's messy updo in a sensible twist, worn shoes that used to belong to her mother. Walking to one lonesome station to the next. She had memorized the route long ago, knew the schedules by heart.

An older women was waiting by the station. This, too, was tradition.

"Mrs. Macready."

<p>"Miss Pevensie."

"Dr. Pevensie, actually."

"So I've heard. Summa Cum Laude, I presume." "Yes." "So was the Professor."

The two women measured each other from different heights. They do not embrace. Dr. Pevensie took the small step to the carriageto the carriage, silently taking position by the driver. Mrs. Macready's hands are spotted and firm on the reins.

"Old Polly isn't here." The younger one ventured.

"Dead. Broke her hindlegs in the Summer. We  had to put her down."

"She was the Professor's favorite. He doted on her so."

"He made her fat with apples. When the animal couldn't rise again she lost her purpose. It was a mercy."

Susan only hummed. But then again, she was not one won't to share her opinions on mercy.

The rest of the trip was made in silence, broken by the sounds of crushed gravel and horse hoofs. Over them, the roof of steepled bark fingers casted long thin shadows on the path. 

The were not the last to arrive to the chapel, but only just. Mrs M had no patience happy-holidays and how-do-you-dos, and Susan cast her own courtesies aside for the day. They separated with a nod. Susan took her spot by the wall, sidestepping the few stragglers that attended the third mass on Christmas Day after lunch or the widowed zealots that went to all. No young families here, thank God, those were all too happy to stay around the fire long after the meal was eaten.

There was a type of kinship in this: tilted heads, mouthed recognition. The old people of this part of the country knew each other by sight and grievance and came together to brave the cold and the loss amongst neighbors and marble saints. Sinew grows back; the ache stays forever, specially in white Christmas days. 

All whispers ebbed away when the priest started speaking. Susan listened, counting the time in praises to the saviour, swallowing down memories of other masses.

The painted glass spun the cold winter light into golden shadows, a pleasent haze the shimmered and wavered with the hymns. It fell on large beams that cast a heavenly light on white buns and balding heads, turning curls into manes, dust motes into floating diamonds. Her own left cheek was hit by the colored light picture, St. Paul blinded, thrown down from his rearing horse. She pressed her red lips together while the priest read the congregations in joy at the Saviour's birth.

_"Adeste fideles læti triumphantes, Venite, venite in Bethlehem."_  


Susan had not had latin lessons. That was Peter. She had found his books amongst his things after the funeral and hadn't let them go all that winter. By spring she could read the Bible, by summer she could speak it. Somedays all that had had kept her from getting out of bed was visiting the library, reading a new passage of Aristoteles.

Now she knew exactly what the priest was saying. The magic spell of childhood had been lefted; the hymns were ditties, the priest no linger a saintly magician. Presents were bought and saved for, the chimneys stayed empty in the morning.  Once, she would have been the first to open her mouth to trill high and clear, pretty Susan who was always on the frontline of the choir. Lucy was the one that always end up being put on the back row for fidgeting, she remembered. Peter and Edmund, alter boys in their white rests, had nearly ruined the Christmas Eve before Father went to war, dropping the candlesticks right before communion. It was hard to remember, decades and years ago, but for a moment the voices swelling in harmony were the ones of her childhood and the incense caught thick on her throat, her nose, her watering eyes.

_"Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine. Gestant puellæ viscera."_

The priest asked the parishioners to pray for the lost and the unfaithfull, that they might find the light of God's embrace. That they might find Heaven's doors open and forgiving. Susan nearly spoke out, then. She imagined herself rising in front of all this old deluded elders, Jesus in the crucifix and foolish, blind Paul, and tell them all that God's embrace was warm and selective and Heaven's gates were screeching metal and a deathly collision. She did not, pf course. It was Christmas, after all.

Instead she pressed her lips tighly together to stop any condenations or hallelujahs from escaping. She kept silent all through the songs and the homily, back straights, chin tilted in queenly defiance, and when the whole congregation fell to their knees she alone stayed on her feet, as tall and unbending as cipress tree. Her knuckes were white where they clutched the brim of her hat, her gloves. This too was bravery; to kneel when all others stood, to stand when all others kneeled.</p>

This, too, was strength - doggedly ignoring the roaring echo tugging at every Gloria and Rex. Lifting her chin high, high, and think _let Him roar._

When communion came Susan was part of the queue, a clear spirit partaking in wine and bread, the flesh and blood of the son. She bit in the ostia and imagined herself with fangs, a great toothy maw. She did nor kneel to pray. She did not pray at all.

More hymns, more roars. Dusk came and hid St. Paul's agony. She was glad. The priest spoke some more words of peace and brotherhood, blithely ignorant on the merits of sisters. At last the congregation left the chapel for the night. Susan cast one last glance at crucifix before crossing herself. She wondered if nails in a crux felt much different than a stab in an alter. Instead of crossing herself she made a shallow curtesy at the crucifix before settling the hat around her curls and turning in her heels.

Outside was chilly and grey, snow long melted to mud. It clung to the hemms of her coat and second-hand shoes but she paid it no mind. Her steps were sure in weaving between roots, unlike Lucy. Her sister had never stopped expecting the trees to move out of their way to accommodate her.

The Kirke house stood tall and unconpromising as ever. Hers, now. Hers the keys she always kept on her person, hers these long old halls and Macreadys devotion. If it had been an immense antiques shop when she was a child it was now the mausoleum. She would need to send for some cleaners this spring, to lift the white linen of the furniture and burnish the armor suits. Even her steps were muffled.

She found the room easily enough. The only one with a piece uncovered. In a house of ghosts the wardrobe was nude, doors open every day of the year. It was empty. Susan had burned the fur coats years ago.

This year's candle was lilac, made from lavander gathered on an amorous trip to Provance. The lover had left, on his way to Rome. Her road did not take her there, so they parted ways and Susan had spent some pennies on wax and tallow. The matchsticks were bought in Brussels, in a quiosk by a lion shaped fountain.

The fire caught easily. Soon Susan had to place the candle in the wardrobe floor in a scorched circle of dried wax. Someone would have to scrape that off eventually. It wouldn't do for the prospective buyers to find defects on the furniture.

"I graduated in Jule. Medieval History with a focus on Common Latin. I've received some proposals from America, teaching positions. Remember when Lucy and I opened the school near Cair Paravel?" No answer. In truth she didn't even know who she was speaking to."I'm moving to New York in February. I only came to say goodbye."

Suddenly she couldn't breathe. Her heartbeat rang in her ears, a cacophony of half blotted memories drowning out her composure. A cold draught of hair made the shuffled clash together the next room over.

"Is that it? No roaring, no last minute train crash? Very well, then," she unhooked the rusty wardrobe key from the ring. It fell with a thump on the scorched wood. 

"Farewell, Aslan."

For a short moment, a fresh breeze swept through the room. It carried the smells of sea and summer. For a few heartbeats, it felt like a kiss on the forehead.

The wardrobe doors were flung closed. The air was filled with stirred dust and a woman's panting. No more sounds. Everything was quiet. A white Cristmas in the country side, an abandoned manor soon to be for sale -- nothing extraordinary. Nothing miraculous about it. 

A woman stood in a room in a house in a world. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Her fingers, perfectly manicured wine red in preparation for the holidays, did not shake. The hinges did. Theose did quite a lot of work, after all. 

A wardrobe stood in front of a woman in a room in a house in the same world. It was empty. Slowly, wisps of smoke curled from within, smelling of purplish wild heather days.

Susan did not kneel on the way out. There was no one there to kneel for. 

**Author's Note:**

> Adeste fideles læti triumphantes, Venite, venite in Bethlehem.-O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant!/O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem;
> 
> Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine/ Gestant puellæ viscera - God of God, light of light/ Lo, he abhors not the Virgin's womb. A bad try at a Latin burn.


End file.
